I like the concept. Like you say the only problem is changing society's mental models about how we interact through email. The metaphor of mail suggest that you need not 'knock' to deliver the mail, but if enough people start to take this up then it will become a convention.
Such a system, if implement on a large scale throughout the web, along with stronger sanctions against offending spammers (if indeed the SMTP problems discussed in earlier posts are resolved to trace them) should ease the financial burden placed on ISP's. It is true that all ISP's face the same problems, but at the end of the day it is the users of an ISP pay for the service provided (be it through service charges, advertising, symbiotic marketing etc etc...). As a result it is our money that is spent on this rather than other services that add value to our experience online, develop and implement new technology, or reduce our monthly ISP bill. Therefore although private filters on our mail boxes may stop spamming at one level, we will still suffer from the increased costs imposed on the ISP to deal with spam that they transfer to us.
To me it seems the only way to solve this problem is a change in our online mindset towards this 'knock knock' model.
Slashdot Mirror
I like the concept. Like you say the only problem is changing society's mental models about how we interact through email. The metaphor of mail suggest that you need not 'knock' to deliver the mail, but if enough people start to take this up then it will become a convention.
Such a system, if implement on a large scale throughout the web, along with stronger sanctions against offending spammers (if indeed the SMTP problems discussed in earlier posts are resolved to trace them) should ease the financial burden placed on ISP's. It is true that all ISP's face the same problems, but at the end of the day it is the users of an ISP pay for the service provided (be it through service charges, advertising, symbiotic marketing etc etc...). As a result it is our money that is spent on this rather than other services that add value to our experience online, develop and implement new technology, or reduce our monthly ISP bill. Therefore although private filters on our mail boxes may stop spamming at one level, we will still suffer from the increased costs imposed on the ISP to deal with spam that they transfer to us.
To me it seems the only way to solve this problem is a change in our online mindset towards this 'knock knock' model.